WWII Journal: Sudbury man battled man, nature

Monday

Jun 9, 2014 at 12:01 AM

By Brad PetrishenDaily News Staff

Sometime into his service in the Pacific, Charlie Pepper stopped praying."What good’s it doing?" the 20-year-old would wonder to himself, as he awoke each morning in New Guinea to the same stifling heat."It didn’t do them any good," he’d think as he watched men he’d prayed with die of malaria, and saw his close friend gunned down by a sniper’s bullet right by his side."When it rained, it rained so hard it washed the snakes and rats out of the jungle," Pepper, now 88, said Thursday. "It was a horrible place."Pepper didn’t know what he was getting into in 1943, when he signed up for the Air Corps in his senior year at Melrose High School."I wanted to be a pilot," Pepper said. However, the Army decided it needed boots on the ground in the Pacific more than eyes in the sky.Before he could start aviation school, Pepper was shipped to New Guinea, where the mercury routinely reached 120 degrees in the sun."There's a horrible smell in the jungle," Pepper said – a disgusting milieu of big bugs, dangerous beasts and decaying men.Pepper came down with dengue fever and eventually malaria, and went from 179 to 121 pounds in a matter of weeks.Every day in the hospital, three or four comrades would be covered over with white sheets, he said, and he’d go to bed every night wondering if he was next.After he finally improved, Pepper was sent to perform administrative duties at command headquarters while he recovered. There, he said he met Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers."He’d say, ‘Charlie, you got my copy?’" Pepper remembered. "I liked him. A lot of people didn’t. But he was nice to me."His blue eyes gleaming, Pepper recalled going into the commander’s tent during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in late October 1944. Considered by some to be the largest naval battle in history, the Americans were outnumbered when Adm. William Halsey Jr. sent his powerful 3rd Fleet after a Japanese decoy fleet."MacArthur’s standing there with a phone in his hand, and he’s yelling at Halsey," said Pepper. "He’s yelling, ‘Where are you? We need you now!’ And swearing a lot."Days after the Americans repulsed the Japanese at Leyte, Pepper experienced something he’d never forget.He was sitting next to his close friend and bunkmate when the man stood up to pull something out of his duffel bag."The next thing I know, he’s falling on me," Pepper said. "I yelled, what are you doing?"I look up, and there was a bullet here," Pepper said, pointing to his forehead.Pepper joined a small team of soldiers who fanned out to search the area, eventually spotting a hole covered in sod that looked like a typical hiding spot for a Japanese sniper."I said to the guys, ‘He’s mine,’" Pepper said, and unloaded three shots at close range into the hole. After clearing away the sod, Pepper found the dead Japanese sniper."I found his hole and killed him," Pepper scribbled on Oct. 30, 1941 in a small, well-worn diary he still counts among his most prized possessions.Another of those possessions is a samurai sword he took off a dead Japanese soldier following a battle outside his tent one night."When they charge, the come in like this," he said, holding the sword with both hands in the same manner as the man whom he shot wielding it did seven decades ago.The sword is a tangible reminder of the dangers faced by Pepper and his comrades on a daily basis – dangers, Pepper said, that the Army tried to counteract with pleasure."Practically every night they had movies from Hollywood," Pepper said, recounting his daughter’s surprise one day as she flipped through the pages of his diary.Some days, entries like "bombed by Japs – 18 dead, 20 injured" are followed closely by the name of the picture he’d seen that night."I said, "Carol, if I didn’t go see that movie I’d be a walking zombie, because you’ve got to think of something else," he said. "It took your mind off the hell that was happening around you."One night, a Japanese bomb landed just a few feet away from Pepper as he slept. As he and others rushed out of the tent, it exploded, sending him and others flying through the air."We had a few scratches, but that was it," Pepper marveled. "That was something."The group was much luckier, he said, than the hundreds of dead soldiers he saw on Okinawa – men he helped bury, gruesome images he’d never forget."We took the bodies off the trucks, slid one into a bag, then put the dog tags in the teeth," he said grimly. "There were truckloads of them.""We cried," he said. "We just said a prayer and cried. It was horrible."Pepper would go on to perform myriad duties in the Pacific, including fixing planes, flying on several missions and taking out several Japanese snipers with his carbine."(He’s) a credit to the spirit and traditions of the Army Air Forces," Brig. Gen. D.W. Hutchison wrote in a letter of commendation on July 22, 1945.Pepper wasn’t right for years after the war, and began getting flashbacks just a few weeks ago after going through his old diaries. His first year home, he barely ventured out of his parents’ house."I was delirious much of the time," he said, and afflicted with jungle rot in his feet that left his skin peeling.Eventually, Pepper rebounded, getting several jobs – a meat cutter, a bank runner – before graduating college and getting a job with Raytheon, where he worked for 38 years.He moved to Sudbury with his wife Anne in 1956, and for the past eight years has served as VFW Commander of Post 8771."I’ve enjoyed life," he said, rattling off the many countries he and Anne have traveled to in his retirement.At 88, Pepper still drinks a stiff Manhattan every day before dinner, a tradition he started when stress began to get to him in the early 1970s."My doctor says, ‘Keep doing it," he smiled. "You’re in better shape than me.’"Brad Petrishen can be reached at 508-490-7463 or bpetrishen@wickedlocal.com. Follow him on Twitter @BPetrishen_MWDN.